


Dried Up

by Allikizme



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alcohol, Bonding, Drinking, F/M, Friendship, Humor, Male Bonding, drunk, i wrote this whole piece just to make that joke at the end there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 04:44:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12226011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allikizme/pseuds/Allikizme
Summary: Mulder and Doggett are left in a bar and forced to make nice.





	Dried Up

John Doggett made eye contact with the bartender and raised his hand. A double this time, please, he silently communicated. Because I’m gonna need it.

The man next to him was knocking his empty beer glass back and forth between his hands, the glass sliding over the wood, just loud enough for Doggett to hear it and seriously consider putting a nice bruise on the guy’s lip.

If he were anyone besides Fox Mulder, he just might.

“So, Agent _Doggett,_ ” Mulder said, smiling and twisting on his stool, “you like having your own office? Like being division head?”

Doggett silently willed his last shot to kick in faster. “It’s all right,” he mumbled.

“Scully never liked my taste in décor but you appreciate it, don’t you?”

The bartender set the double shot of rum in front of Doggett. “Sure,” he said, and he lifted it to his lips.

Mulder’s eyes fucking burned a hole in his cheek as he knocked back the drink. Damn Monica. Damn her and Agent Scully for leaving him alone in the bar with the weirdo.

“Oh come on,” Monica had said. “It’ll be a chance for you two to make nice.”

So far “making nice” had consisted of Mulder asking questions and John trying to rub his eyeballs into his skull. And drinking. But not nearly enough.

“ _You_ know,” Mulder said, leaning on the bar, “an awful lot about me, and I don’t know anything about you.” He shrugged. “Minus what happened to your son. Other than that I got nothing.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Yeah and you’ll keep nothing.” God damn. At least his hands were starting to feel numb. Wouldn’t be long now till he started enjoying himself.

“I don’t need to know much,” Mulder said. “I was one of the best criminal profilers when I started. I could figure you out.”

John took a deep breath. Let’s go alcohol, he silently cheered.

Mulder was brought another beer which he held loosely with both hands. He was watching John in the mirror above the bar. “In high school you were on the football team,” he said, “and you weren’t bad, but that wasn’t your passion. Unfortunately your test scores weren’t high enough for what you _really_ wanted, so you changed your dreams to cop and you excelled. You made detective pretty quick. And then it was a short leap from there to FBI agent—something you had almost forgotten you wanted, until Luke’s death.” John tried not to flinch at the bluntness. Instead he rubbed his hands together and thought about being intoxicated.

Mulder took a rather large sip of his drink, set it down, and grabbed a peanut. “So you lose everything, but it’s like starting over. You got your dream job. Sure, you’re carrying so much guilt it probably adds about fifty pounds, but that’s okay. FBI’s a job meant for guys like you.” He dropped a few peanuts into his mouth and talked around the chewing, “So we have John Doggett, now a master of making himself feel bad, doing pretty good for himself in the FBI. And because you’re so good at hurting your own feelings, you go and get a crush on a certain redhead from the basement.”

John looked up from his hands so fast the stool moved underneath him. “What the hell are you talking about,” he growled.

Mulder nodded and pointed at him, so at ease in his stool it’d probably be child’s play to knock him out of it. “See, I was getting to the self-denial stuff.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, I offered to let you tell me yourself—.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to tell you,” John snapped.

Mulder looked at him. John held his gaze for as long as he could before looking away and ordering another shot. In the mirror he saw Mulder take another long swig of his drink.

“John Doggett,” he said, “with a huge puppy-crush on Dana Scully, probably for the sole reason that he thinks he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” John hoped he sounded scathing, but his words were finally starting to slur, and he didn’t mind so much.

Mulder pouted his lips and said, “John, you are just…” He made a fist. “You’re so tight. You’re like a sphincter. All clenched up with all these emotions.” He punched him lightly on the arm. “And you’re dry as a raisin. Seriously. You ought to moisturize.”

“My skin or my humor,” John grumbled.

Mulder chuckled at that. “Sounds like your humor’s good.” He leered at him. “Are you drunk, Agent Doggett?”

Doggett spun a little too quickly on his stool to test it. “Yep,” he said. “I am drunk.” He raised one finger. “And I do not have a crush on Dana.”

“Ooh, Dana.” Mulder smirked. “Didn’t know you were on first-name basis. Do you leave love notes on her desk or—?”

“You know perfectly well it will never happen,” John snapped, suddenly angry. “So leave it the fuck alone.”

Mulder was silent. Good, John thought. That shut him up.

It wasn’t for very long, of course. After just thirty seconds of staring at his beer Mulder turned to him and said, “Why not Agent Reyes?”

John licked his lips and was feeling a bit spinny. “We’re just friends.”

“So were me and Scully,” Mulder said. He made a popping noise. “Probably shouldn’t have waited as long as we did.”

John rolled his head on his shoulder to look at him. “What d’ya mean, waited?”

Mulder raised his eyebrows. “I know everyone and their mother at the Bureau thinks we’ve been fucking for years but it really only started two months before I disappeared.” He set his glass down, suddenly. “I missed everything,” he said. “Scully was pregnant and where the hell was I.”

John found himself lifting a hand to comfort him. “Hey, that wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“Everything is my fault,” Mulder mumbled. “Scully’s abduction. Her sister’s death. Emily—.” He broke off with a gasp. “It’s all because of me.”

John turned Mulder slightly so the man was facing him. “Are you drunk, Mulder?”

Mulder blinked. “Yes,” he decided.

“Look, you… you can’t blame yourself for all that,” John said. “If you do you’ll just be miserable and dry like me.” He found himself leaning forward, because the weight of alcohol in his head suddenly increased. “And Shcully doeshn’t blammmmme you.”

“Of course she doesn’t,” Mulder went on. “But the Bureau doesn’t want me around and it’s only a matter of time before I’m either fired or worse. And what would I do then?” He dropped another handful of peanuts in his mouth and chewed.

John said, “You could always fold boxes.”

Mulder gave him a hard look.

“They’d call you Box Folder.”

Mulder swallowed the peanuts. “That was funny, Doggett,” he said, looking completely serious. “All my life I’ve heard jokes about my name but that—that’s funny. How long have you been sitting on that?”


End file.
